This invention relates to news feeds of content presented to users and in particular to ranking news feed stories in online systems, such as social networking systems, including consideration of specific content clicks on the news feed stories.
Certain online systems, such as social networking systems, have a large amount of social information describing actions performed by users on content provided by the systems and in connection with other users of the systems. Social networking systems, for example, present social information as news feed stories to users of the social networking systems, also referred to herein as stories, content items, or feed stories. A news feed story may describe objects represented in a social networking system, for example, a video, a comment from a user, status messages, external links, content generated by the social networking system, applications, games, or user profile. A goal the social networking system in presenting news feeds is to show users of the social networking system the stories that matter most to the users. A social networking system that presents interesting stories relevant to its users is more likely to ensure that users are loyal to the social networking system and regularly interact with the system.
Users of a social networking system may take various actions, e.g., liking, commenting on, or sharing, on news feeds presented by the social networking systems; the social networking system considers the user actions to determine what content to include in news feeds for the users. However, even when users do not like, comment on or share a story in a news feed, this may not mean that the story was not meaningful to the users. For example, a user may have found a video from a nonprofit organization the user follows on the social networking system to be really informative and interesting, but the video is not something the user felt inclined to like, comment on or share more broadly. Furthermore, different interactions by a user with content, such as a video, in a news feed can provide different information about the user's level of interest in that content in particular and in the news feed in general.